


The Cottage in the Woods

by schweinsty



Category: Cinderella (1950), Cinderella (Fairy Tale)
Genre: F/F, Gen, fairytale references, idek, waifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 20:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2242659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweinsty/pseuds/schweinsty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What did Cinderella's fairy godmother do when she wasn't transfiguring pumpkins? Teeny tiny commentfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cottage in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at comment_fic on livejournal.

There's a village on the outskirts the Briar Wood, and from that village there's a small dirt lane that leads deep into the forest, past a cottage made of candy and a brook where sometimes you can find a stooped old crone with a basket of apples. At the end of the lane there's a cottage, and in that cottage live two little old ladies who come to the village sometimes and buy supplies.

They don't live alone all the time; every so often someone comes through the village--two ragged little waifs named Helga and Gretel, a lovely young lady with hair black as ebony, lips red as roses, skin a tanned honey-gold that looks vaguely Hispanic or Mediterranean. These travelers look lost and troubled when they go into the forest, but the next time the villagers see them, they're invariable well-dressed, well-fed, and, if not smiling, always looking like they've had a great weight lifted from their shoulders.

The young people stay sometimes for weeks and sometimes for years. The older girls who pass through usually return to the village shortly with a valise and a train ticket. Sometimes they're bound for a trade school, sometimes they've got a post waiting for them as a housekeeper or a librarian's assistant. One young lady got a scholarship to a university and became a noted professor of linguistics, the first person to translate the previously lost language of A'xc'lat.

But some of the younger ones, and one or two of the older children, stay at the cottage, and sometimes they come into the village with one of the older women, calling them 'Momma' or 'Mum' and carrying baskets full of produce to sell.

One of the women, a white-haired sweetheart who favors a blue hood when it's chilly, disappears once or twice a year for a fortnight. The villagers don't know where she goes, and none of the children ever say a word, but she always comes back with a smile on her face and a basket full of trinkets from far away lands to share with 'the brood'.

The villagers know they can always go to the cottage when they need help with herbs or a crop or when the midwife is ill, and if no one ever talks about how those little old ladies have been little old ladies for several long decades already--well, it's not any concern of theirs, is it?


End file.
